Boy Trouble
- Posted by: Anne Trubek
- on October 17, 2008 at 3:21 pm
The trials and tribulations of getting boys (and men) to read
At a recent one-on-one conference, my son’s fourth-grade teacher told me about her frustration with my kid’s literature group. It consists, she said, of a “group of boys.” There was notable, elongated emphasis on the word “boys,” further accented an eye roll and dramatic sigh.
It was meant to be funny. I get that. She made the gesture to spur commiseration over her unenviable charge: corralling a bunch of unruly boys into discussing a novel. But, it was also telling. Apparently, it is now socially acceptable to bash boys’ capacities in school—particularly when it comes to reading and writing. (No one would dare tread on this shaky soil with, say, a race-based generalization.)
According to Peg Tyre’s new book, The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents & Educators Must Do, the statistics validate the teacher’s rolling eyes. Boys are expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls; they are four times more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorders or learning disabilities; and they lag behind girls in reading and writing (a gap that widens as they progress through high school). Currently, males are also a minority on college campuses, where 57.2 percent of students are female.
Tyre points out that boys become disillusioned with school for many reasons: The curriculum is largely overseen and taught by women with reading assignments skewed towards traditional girl-friendly texts, like Little House on the Prairie. Writing assignments given in school often center on emotions and feelings (which further favor female students). Boys internalize the rolled-eyes and exasperation of their well-meaning teachers, Tyre explains.
Jon Scieszka is keenly aware of these trends. His Guys Read initiative is a “web-based literacy program…to help boys find stuff they like to read.” Scieszka is the author of many great kids’ books, including the Time Warp Trio series, which my son gobbled up in second grade, and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. His playful and inventive site has book recommendations for young guys (Cars That Go and Things That Go tops that list), middle guys (the Baseball Card Adventures series) and older guys (Sherlock Holmes). He has picks for adults, too—though men may prefer Esquire magazine’s “75 Books Every Man Should Read.”
It’s slightly pathetic that we need guides for starting “guys read” groups, complete with downloadable bookmarks and stickers for labeling books as male-friendly. Still, such initiatives are helpful–I even turn to the list to find books for my son. Ultimately, it’s not so different from other methods of indentifying enjoyable reads, from Oprah’s Book Club to the Pulitzers.
The National Book Foundation announced its National Book Awards finalists this week, and I imagine many readers are now seeking out the nominated titles. Though, based upon surveys of book-buying habits, most of those buyers will be women; men buy fewer books per year than their female counterparts. (According to a recent Harris Poll, 32 percent of American women read more than 10 books in a year, compared to 22 percent of men.)
While my son tolerates discussions of Stuart Little in school—and reluctantly writes essays about things that make him happy—he comes home and tears into Calvin and Hobbes. The comic often inspires him to ask me questions like, “Who do you think gets into the most trouble, Calvin, Bart Simpson, or Tom Sawyer?” We then weigh the relative rapscallion qualities of each. That’s the kind of boy trouble I like.
(Image from GuysRead.com; title, logo and text © Jon Scieszka.)
DISCUSSION: 6 Comments
The recent upswing in discussion of the “boy problem” in education begs for a more holistic analysis of gendered economic and social outcomes, and the origins and effects of gender stereotypes on even liberal, feminist parents.While girls and women are outperforming boys and men in the class-room and library these days, we must be careful not to confuse academic success with a guarantee of economic stability or long-term happiness. We should be celebrating the fact that the expansion of educational opportunity has dramatically increased the proportion of US women who seek and obtain a formal education. We should also remember that women throughout the world lack anything close to parity with men in terms of educational opportuinities. Furthermore, even if the academic paper gap is closing, the pay gap has not gone away. As Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever discuss in Women Don’t Ask (2003; Princeton), success in the classroom often fails to prepare women to be assertive in the work-place. Girls and women are socialized to put the needs of others before their own, a finding common in industrial democracies as well as developing countries. This tendency towards self-sacrifice leaves women ill-prepared to negotiate for salaries and demonstrate the same competitiveness that men learn as young boys. Babcock and Laschever’s interviews, surveys, and broader research demonstrate how women consistently undervalue the worth of their work and the extent to which this hinders women’s advancement beyond the Ivy Tower.Insofar as education is “feminized” and books are unappealing to boys because they involve emotional content, educators, parents, and librarians should take this argument as a wake-up call. Perhaps as parents and teachers, we should scrutinize how we treat our children differently based on their gender/sex. Do we encourage boys to play outside more frequently than girls? Could we accept a son or boy who spends most of his time reading for fun? Is this an easier image to reconcile with a girl? It’s easy to see the connection between these early habits and later study skills.If a problem arises within a group of children, do we stop competitive behavior among girls earlier than among boys? How would we react to a girl who said that she wanted to be “better than everyone else,” even if it meant hurting someone’s feelings? How do we react to a boys who say the same thing, perhaps in the context of competitive sports? Consider your reactions to “tomboys” versus your reactions to feminine boys.The bottom line here is that many of the gender “differences” we observe in children are the creation of the adults responsible for child-care. Perhaps it’s to the child’s benefit to encourage reading beyond their comfort zones – for example, boys and girls reading about stereotypically “boy topics” and “girl topics”. One way we can promote these broader reading perspectives is to dismantle the salience of gendered associations such as “girls like reading emotional books.” Another is to refuse to accept the value judgements associated with “feminine” and “masculine”. Clearly, educators and parents want all children to enjoy reading and reap all of the benefits of literacy as well as education more broadly. Rather than treating childhood preferences as completley fixed, however, we should reconsider our roles in shaping the perspectives of the children in our care. We have only to gain from a thorough consideration of our actions and unintentional impacts they may be having.
give me a kid that doesn’t like to read, and i’ll show you a parent who hasn’t done their job. when kids don’t read, it’s because their parents don’t read to them, or have never shown them how to enjoy different genres. maybe boys are not doing well in today’s schools because their parents have decided that there are other priorities that come before being a parent. children are lagging in emotional maturity because parents today do not spend enough time with their children, teaching them how to use mental dexterity and social flexibility. reading is just one part of the whole pie.as an educator, i don’t teach “girl” lit and “boy” lit– i teach literature and hold all my students to high standards. most of today’s children do not ever step into the local library or book store because their parents have not made it a habit to take them. no wonder boys don’t like to read–if the only time i read was when i was forced into a genre that doesn’t interest me, then i would think reading was boring as well.
I cried the other day while watching Prince Caspian.This is purely because my mother read the books to my family. I remember Saturday evenings, while my younger sister and brother, my father and myself vied for the best spot to sit, while my mom got the gliding rocker, and pulled out Prince Caspian, or The Silver Chair, or The Magicians Nephew. She would go back a few pages, to get us back in the mood, and the forward, her voice transporting us to Narnia. It would change for each charictor, deep, earthy, with a wealth of hidden power for Aslan. Light, girlish and trusting for Lucy. Boyish and a bit silly for Edmund. Susan’s changed, from careing older sisterly, to know-it-all snobbishness, but with still a touch of lightness. Peter, oldest, protector, had a heavier voice, watching over everyone but not overbearingly so. Each charrictor was brought vividly to mind, and while I watched the movie, I could hear my mother’s voice. And as great as Liam Neeson is, I still think my mother had a better Aslan than he. Because it was cemented in my from my earliest childhood. We started reading when I was 5, and started again a few years later, when my baby brother was old enough to understand. Over the years we’ve discovered the joy of books on CD, and listened to The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trillogy durring a 2 month cross country trip. We fought over the newest Harry Potter books, and now my brother(a college student) and mother are fighting over Brisinger.I read to my daughter(she’s 2) and look forward to shareing my most loved books with her. READ TO YOUR CHILDREN. Someday, they will love you for it.
I think that reading is and can be universal, and the idea of “masculine” or “feminine” literature is an excuse made to cover a lack of effort and lack of focus on (and funding and support of) our educational system. If you want to get kids of all shapes, sizes, genders and differences interested in reading, introduce them to books that interest them as individuals. I understand that this is difficult in a classroom setting, but education begins at home, and the responisbility to get our boys and girls to read rests with family as much as teachers. If you read the author’s foreward to William Goldman’s abridgement of The Princess Bride, you’ll read the story of a sports-obsessed kid who grows up to become a writer because his father read the “good parts” of the S. Morgenstern novel to him when he was sick. In my own life, it was my parents who took the time to read to us every day. It was that, and not any educational programs or school book that turned us all into readers. And it was my grandparents on both sides who encouraged reading in their own children. The results of that are astounding. My father has been known to finish a Grisham, Clancy or King novel in half a day because “there was nothing better to do”, my mother and older sister keep a “to read” stack by their beds that often takes over the corner of the room, my brother, an engineering major at Penn State, spends a good amount of his spare time reading everything from novels to cookbooks, and I read and write as a hobby. And it didn’t begin with school, but at home.
I am lucky. My kids like to read and be read to (two daughters and one son). My son did the “guys read” program and enjoyed it. We have always read to our children since they were very little… babies really. My son went to the bookstore the other day with my wife and purchase the novel Holes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holes_(novel) . When he got home he noticed the movie was on TV. He told my wife, he didn’t want to watch it – because it would spoil the book. Now, he does watch TV and go on the computer and play video games and do all the other boy things, but he also likes to read. And I was VERY proud of him for saying what he said…Bottom line. It starts at home. Parents need to read to kids and with kids. When they do, the kids will read.
Wow, Sarah El, I truly appreciate your post. I have now read a few pieces by this author, and I like her writing as well. The reason I started reading her articles was because, like her, I have a young son (three sons actually: ages 23, 13 and 6). My sons all love to read. Even the little one. They actually *do not* prefer specifically masculine content, although it is always somewhat enticing when they are young due to their vulnerability to popular culture, socialization and peer pressure. In fact, the older two boys mock the idea that boys should be given special male-specific lists or content. They love literature and music and are quite verbal. Boys are so much more multi-faceted than we give them credit for, as are girls. There is so much overlap among the genders that a boy can be more like a girl than another boy, and a girl can be more like a boy, etc. We really should let go of the traditional way we socialize young children. In spite of our consciousness raising and modern day world, if anyone doubts the heavy gender-based socializing going on with young kids, even currently, they should spend some time in the local toy store or at the local elementary school. Look at who the socializers are. And people criticize promoting the nurturing qualities of young males as “feminization.” (And heaven forbid that a girl doesn’t have a princess outfit.) So much more could be said on this. We need to stop the gender biases and allow more androgyny. We’re all humans.